Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron knows a thing or two about public relations. Even so, his carefully crafted visit to India, with senior Cabinet ministers meeting a wide range of policy- and opinion-makers and business leaders in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, should be deemed a success. It has helped take the bilateral relationship back to the template first created by another Conservative Party prime minister, the unfairly under-rated John Major. It was Mr Major who first altered the metaphor in this complex bilateral relationship between a former colony, “the jewel in the crown”, now an “emerging market”, and a former global power by launching what was called the Indo-British Partnership Initiative (IBPI). The idea of “partnership” was new to the bilateral discourse, though that is precisely what India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru had envisioned for the relationship. A fact that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reminded his audience at Oxford University in 2005 when he paid a self-confident tribute to Britain’s enduring influence on modern and free india.
Yet, the momentum built during the 1990s decade of partnership was dissipated in more recent years by a variety of factors, ranging from the trans-Atlantic financial crisis to the short-sighted compulsions of domestic politics in both countries and the impact of the war on jehadi terrorism on the bilateral relationship. Britain’s Labour Party, especially during the months of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s tenure, was quite willing to upset India to score points with Muslim opinion at home. That is an electoral compulsion that a Conservative Party PM does not have, even if some of his coalition members may still do. Mr Cameron does not have to look over his shoulder to check what Muslim voters may be thinking at home, when he makes candid statements about sources of jehadi terrorism in South Asia. This gives the British government an opportunity to reconnect with India and “renew” and “enhance” a partnership that Mr Major was the first to author.
Ironically, though, while today Indian outward investment into Britain exceeds inward investment into India from Britain, there are few areas outside of defence, energy and finance where Britain is a competitive source of investment. Thus, even South Korea has been able to overtake Britain as an investor in India. This is why the British government complains so much about barriers to foreign investment in areas like insurance, banking and retail. These barriers will go away too, like all the other ones have, but not in a hurry, given global uncertainties and rising protectionism in developed economies. Prime Minister Singh’s assurance that India will be more welcoming of British goods, services and capital and that, in turn, Britain should remain open to Indian goods and services was timely. Apart from their shared interest in the further universalisation of the English language, India and Britain do indeed have shared strategic interests around the world. The challenge for both governments is to convince domestic public opinion that better relations with the other is in their self-interest. While a growing number of Indians visit the UK and a new generation of Indians is neither awed nor intimidated by Britain, India’s profile and image in the UK leaves much to be desired. The British media and academia have not played a helpful or constructive role. Hopefully, Mr Cameron’s new interest in India will help.